1. Filed of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic price display systems and more particularly, to price tags which are electronically controlled from remote locations.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is desirable in the retail industry to be extremely efficient when identifying and ordering goods through the various steps to the actual display of the goods and notification to the purchasing public of the price of such goods. Retailers, in particular, strive to reduce the time necessary to inventory ordered and back-ordered goods, as well as the actual sales of goods and remaining stock. In the highly competitive retail environment, every hour expended to document, inventory and display goods depletes the profits realized from sales of the goods. Retailers are particularly sensitive to the necessity of cost-effectiveness, especially when sales of products are necessary in order to turn over or clear out stock.
Usually, a retailer will order goods or products, commonly known as SKU's (stock keeping units), to be shipped from a manufacturer or distributor. A single SKU equals one of the particular goods. The goods arrive at the retailer in bulk, enclosed with invoices, bills of lading, or other transit documents that the retailer must review, collate and cross-check to determine that the goods he will pay for have indeed been delivered. A manufacturer ships the goods without price tags. This is because the manufacturer does not know what the goods will ultimately be priced at and what the actual demand will be that will dictate the ultimate price to the purchasing public.
The retailer then affixes a label or price tag to the goods bearing indicia pertaining to the particular product and store, i.e. store name, bar code, SKU, model number, size, color, etc. The tag is usually manually affixed to the product in the store and then distributed or racked at the appropriate area of the store for sale. After a specified period of time has elapsed since the display of the goods, those goods not sold must be put on sale or marked down to attract consumers so that the stock can be moved out of the store. This requires adjusting the original price and writing thereon the sale price. This may occur more than once, perhaps even two or three times, before the SKU is actually sold.
On certain occasions, a distribution center for the retailer or similarly owned retailers will affix the price tag to the product before it is shipped to a specific store or stores. During this procedure, and the time lag for the goods tagged at the distribution center and received at the retailer, the retailers' marketing (pricing) strategy is vulnerable to access by competitors. The potential for unauthorized access to the retailer's pricing strategy is increased due to the time lag, which could prevent the retailer from being first-in-time to offer a sale of highly competitive goods.
Procedures to indicate sales involve manually affixing sales tags over the original price on the price tag to notify consumers of the sale price. Many retailers still use a person to mark down a product for a sale.
In all the situations presented above, a tremendous amount of time is lost "tagging" the goods for sale and manually adjusting the price, in practically all instances downward, for the goods on sale.
Electronic display systems are known, some of which address certain of the disadvantages discussed above.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,139,149 to Crepeau et al discloses a computer controller connected to a series of hard wired display units.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,500,880 to Gomersall et al discloses a series of remote displays actuated by a computer but does not show individual price tags. Rather it shows pricing displays mounted on the edge of a shelf.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,727,368 to Larson et al discloses a series of remote lock boxes controlled by a central computer through radio frequencies and/or telephone lines.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,888,709 to Revesz et al discloses what appears to be a radio transmitted series of signals directed to remote displays located on shelves to control the pricing on the remote display.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,019,811 to Olson et al discloses a series of remote display units directed from a central system. The display units could not be used for individual price tags.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,121,563 to Connor et al discloses a display device useful for mounting cards or other items.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,572,653 to DeTemple et al discloses a hard wired grid controlled from a central source having a plurality of stations which then send infrared signals to display units or can be used to receive information from shopping carts and the like to indicate shoppers habits.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,715,622 to Giordano, Jr. discloses a shelf mounted display that receives radio frequency information by means of an antenna 24 and then displays the information on a display unit 22. This system is also intended for mounting on shelves.
However, among the known devices and systems, there still remains the inefficient task of mounting the price or display tag for the goods to the item for sale. The inefficient requirement of having to indicate price reductions manually on a price tag is still not addressed by the inventions above.
The above devices and systems do not display the sale price directly on the product in an electronic display being remotely controlled. Therefore, removal of a product or products from a specific rack or shelf area indicating the sale price of goods will leave purchasers confused as to the actual sale price of the goods.
The above devices and systems also do not permit consumers to view an item on sale displaying the original price and repetitive markdowns, so that the consumer will be encouraged to purchase the goods on sale.
It is therefore desirable to have the SKU's arrive at the retail establishment already having a price tag mounted thereto to reduce substantially the time required to process incoming goods and display same to the purchasing public. This, of course, as mentioned above, impacts tremendously on the merchants profits. The ability of a retailer to be able to handle incoming goods which already have price tags attached, coupled with being able to immediately display the goods without any further effort by the retailer and then to electronically adjust the price of the goods from a remote location so that the consumer sees the successive price adjustments with the goods, is highly advantageous both for its cost-effectiveness and maintaining a good rapport with consumers.